Ben found this MuzzleTov pig out in the pasture. It has an infection in it’s nose. We have a hospice area up near our cottage where we care for the occasional pig like this.
Ben is the pig doctor, and occasional chicken doctor. Warm baths, extra garlic in their diet and simply making sure they’re not getting picked on by other pigs can make the difference. Sometimes I’ll lance and drain something like this if it doesn’t go down on its own – other times we let it alone and just watch it.
If you read livestock books you’ll get the impression that disease is rampant and there are all sorts of horrible things the animals will die of. If you read the media you’ll think farmers are using antibiotics wildly on all the animals. The reality is that if you select for hardy stock then injury and disease is actually infrequent. It is the rare pig who ends up in the hospice. Any that do get this extra help get marked to never become breeders. This is just incase they have any heritable genetics for susceptibility. Mother Nature teaches us to cull the weak. We breed the best of the best and eat the rest. Only about 5% of females and about 0.5% of males get a chance to test breed and pass on their genes. The rest go to meat. We are the predators constantly thinning the herd and strengthening our stock. The result is our herds grow stronger with each passing generation. I will go as far as to help but if I intervene then that is a major negative mark in my little black book that gets the pig tracked away from ever passing on its genes.
Outdoors: 37°F/28°F Overcast, Light Snow 0.5″
Tiny Cottage: 63°F/55°F
Daily Spark: War does not determine who is right – only who is left. -Anon
